


Breathing fire and sleeping in gold

by myoue



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Age Swap, Alternate Universe - Victorian, England (Country), M/M, Royalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 18:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1314508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myoue/pseuds/myoue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1800s England. Where Levi is a prince who doesn’t want to be a prince, and Eren is his butler who may or may not always know what’s best for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathing fire and sleeping in gold

**Author's Note:**

> this fic has been influenced by numerous things including black butler and university depression.

He holds his head in his hand, scritching and scratching away on a piece of parchment with the other. Daylight beats on him through the window and Levi is stuck inside writing taxes and filing business transactions, sighing and humming every few minutes because he’ll go insane otherwise. His desk is piled up high with stacks of papers stained with ink, literature that he hasn’t gotten around to, and unopened letters addressed to his family from nobles across the country that he'll get to eventually. For now, he stops writing only to look up briefly and decide that throwing the quill he's holding violently across the table sounds like a good idea.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he says obstinately, staring at the quill before at Eren in front of him, as if waiting for the orders to continue working that he knows are coming.

Eren does as he expects, not getting angry and remaining as irritatingly calm as ever. “Levi, it’s not that much more, okay? You can finish this much off, can’t you?”

Levi frowns. Of course. Typical. He can finish this off, yes, he can sign whatever filthy documents need signing and do messy unorganized budget planning in his sleep. But it’s not exactly in his life plan to feel like a slave to numbers and to written permissions to other business companies. He’s only doing this under the order of his mother and the vagueness called obligation. But he feels absolutely no motivation for it, and he’ll favour staring at the wall before doing any more of this.

“It’s boring. I can’t do boring things,” Levi sulks with an indignant cross of his arms and a swivel of his chair to face the skylight outside his ceiling-length windows. “You don’t even know what exactly it is I’m even doing, do you, Eren?”

“I don’t have to know what it is to know that you should be doing it.”

“What an excuse.”

He’s only delaying the inevitable, and Eren begins to frown as well because his job gets harder every time Levi insists on refusing to do something. Which, as of lately, has been growing greatly in precedence. “You’re already seventeen years old. You understand you have a duty, do you not, Levi?”

“Yes,” he grumbles.

“You understand that duties must be fulfilled?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then—”

“Yes, yes! I understand!” Levi shouts. He turns his chair back around with a scowl on his face, and Eren just folds his hands on top of the table in front of him looking entirely unaffected by his outburst. Levi thinks that Eren has probably practiced this impertinent stare to get so good at it, and then Levi remembers that Eren has had to deal with him for a good portion of his life. A portion of his life that Levi will never let him have back. Levi regards Eren for a moment before finally breathing out, “I’ll finish it then. Gods.”

He stands up to reach for the pen, but Eren gets to it before him. Forming a soft smile on his lips, he holds out the pen to Levi with a swift yet delicate movement of his hand. “Thank you, Levi.”

He takes it, almost grabs it back like a child, and sits back down with a huff. “What are you thanking me for?”

“Thank you for doing this for me.”

“It’s not _for_ you.”

“Because of me.”

Levi pauses, knowing Eren’s probably right about that. Probably right like he always has been, always will be. He looks down at the papers again, ignoring Eren’s gaze before it gets him to do anything else he doesn’t want to do. It’s almost embarrassing the way Eren can get him to bend to his will with a single flex of his lip and a word or two. Eren sits here, refusing to leave him alone, and Levi won’t ever admit that he finds Eren’s presence here kind of reassuring. Somehow.

But Levi keeps to his word, working tirelessly through the stacks until he starts to yawn and the movements of his pen start to slow. He peeks up at Eren and finds he’s being stared at no less intensely than he was for the past couple of hours, and it’s like a silent urge to keep going. He can see it in Eren's eyes, and the way Eren sits there unmovingly like a soldier under an order. Levi sighs because there has got to be better things for Eren to do than just sit here and watch him.

And then Levi thinks he’d like a cup of tea actually, and his mouth is open just about to ask Eren to get him some. But not before Eren gives him another close-eyed smile—or was it a smirk?—and Levi closes his mouth again with a slight grimace. He’s got to finish this and no kind of distractions, nothing, not even Eren’s dumb faces, are going to get to him.

It turns out to be harder to ignore than he originally planned.

When Levi gets bored once more, he decides to break the silence just as twilight breaks through the windows.

“Don’t you wish we ever traded places?” he muses, making another arbitrary scratch on the papers. “You would do better as royalty than I would.”

He says this nonchalantly (maybe only partially serious) but Eren is quick to contradict him. “No, of course not! Levi is of noble blood and I am just a servant. It couldn’t possibly be anything else.”

Levi doesn’t miss the look of sadness that crosses Eren’s eyes for a brief second before it fades just as quickly as it came. He's not even sure if he said that out of ill intentions or not, not sure if he wants to dismiss his own duties as prince, or if he just wants Eren to share the burden. “What if we were both royalty then?”

Eren becomes silent at that, as if really taking this thought into consideration, really wondering if life would be any better for the both of them if it were like this, before he shakes his head and definitively says, “I’m not royalty.”

It’s such a boring answer, and Levi doesn’t know why it bothers him so much. He doesn’t know why he’s bothered at the thought that Eren can be dismissed away at such mediocrity; this simple answer that determines the two of them so wholly and completely and differently from each other. It’s almost (almost) cruel and unfair, and looking at Eren now he suddenly becomes overwhelmed with frustration.

“I don’t care if you’re not royalty,” Levi says snipped, like he's trying to sound cocky but the meaning of his words beg to differ, and he finds that he can't look at Eren anymore because his face starts to feel warm.

But Eren only chuckles lightly, urging Levi to stop talking about fantasies and keep writing. And Levi does, knowing Eren won’t take anything he says seriously anyway.

 

The clock strikes 6 o’clock and Levi hovers himself by the wall, preoccupied with watching the other guests mill about. He’s wearing fancy dress pants and a fluffy cravat that he was forced into only hours earlier in preparation for this house party that his mother's friends were throwing. He was encouraged to find a date before the party, if not now while on the dance floor, but Levi had adamantly refused saying he was fine being alone. He was told not to get used to saying that, but he had only waved them off and walked away to get afternoon dessert at the buffet table.

So, by now he’s alone and wasting away time by leaning against a porcelain pillar and rejecting any pretty girl who tries to chat him up. He’s not exactly the type to have satisfaction in watching disappointed girl after disappointed girl. He’s just simply not interested. He hasn’t been interested in much anything for a while now.

He then spots Eren a little ways away, decked out in his own dress suit and shined up shoes that were given to him by Levi’s family, complete with slicked back hair that he must have prepared by his own hand. He paces back and forth standing by himself and with his hands held politely behind his back. Levi has seen Eren dressed up like this only a handful of times when he attended parties to look after Levi when he was younger. It's been awhile since then, but Levi had specifically requested that Eren come with him this time, using again that feeble excuse for feeling reassured in his mind.

Eren seems to keep a distant watch on Levi, just as much he seems to be on Eren. He debates on walking over, not wanting to bother Eren and not wanting to take the place of some girl who may potentially ask for Eren’s hand to dance. Although it’s not common for a butler to be asked for hand in dance, Levi thinks that Eren’s looks and delicate aura might just be too good to pass up, knowing full well that he’s far too handsome to be a butler in the first place. But he decides that first and foremost, he feels a sense of obligation the longer he sees Eren wallowing in solitude and looking much too uncomfortable in that ruffled collar. Levi finds himself making his way over despite his previous qualms.

“Eren,” he says as he reaches him.

“Levi.”

Eren looks at him in surprise and attempts to straighten himself up a little, fiddling with the ruffled collar. Now that they’re standing up close, the bangs of Eren’s hair are definitely matted back unlike Levi has ever seen before, and it makes him think that Eren doesn’t look like a servant at all.

“You haven’t been asked by a pretty girl to dance yet?” Levi says, although he’s one to talk, rejecting girls left and right himself. And he’s been watching Eren practically all night, so he already knows what Eren’s answer is going to be.

Eren ends up shaking his head. “I would say no to them anyway.”

Levi looks up at him quizzically, wondering if it’s okay to feel happy about hearing that. “Hm? Why is that?”

Eren only replies with a simple shrug, “I’m no good at dancing.” And Levi frowns because he’s known Eren all his life and this fact was never once mentioned to him, nor had it ever crossed his mind.

“Of course you can. Dancing isn’t hard,” he says. In fact, Levi himself had taken a multitude of dance lessons, being a compulsory component for a learning prince, but now that he thinks about it he only remembers Eren standing off to the side and clapping every time he’d completed a beautiful routine under the hand of some instructor.

“It _is_ hard,” Eren retorts, probably thinking he can’t compare himself to a prodigy like Levi.

“If you try it, you’ll learn easily,” Levi presses.

“I’ll be clumsy.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“I won’t.”

“You’ll be fine with me.”

“Huh?” Eren tears his gaze away from the floor to look at Levi, and he looks surprised once more.

“Dance with me,” Levi tells him, more like orders him. But he’s being serious because the prospects of dancing with Eren seem much more promising than with any other girl here.

But Eren only shakes his head and almost splutters out, “I can’t do that! We’re both males.” And when Levi throws him a glare, Eren continues on hesitantly to say, “I’m sure some girl here wants to… with you…”

“I don’t care.”

“B-But you’re royalty and you deserve—”

“ _I don’t care_ ,” Levi growls, and he’s getting fed up with Eren’s petty resistance.

He holds his hand out defiantly and Eren looks at it before swallowing nervously and sighing. Eren can resist all he wants, but both of them know that he’ll end up complying before their master-servant contract even kicks in. He slowly brings his hand out and Levi grabs it, leading him—dragging him—to the dance floor.

“You’re sure about this?” Eren asks tentatively when they get to the center and he glances around fervently at the other guests. Levi guides Eren’s hand to his shoulder as Eren says, “You don’t mind other people watching?”

Levi takes hold of his back, propping his arm comfortably underneath Eren’s and firmly holding their other hands outwards in the air. “Let them watch.”

Eren has no more room to protest when they start dancing, stepping and swaying back and forth to the music of multiple string instruments. Levi takes the lead with ease, allowing Eren to follow his movements as they glide across the floor in a lazy waltz. He doesn’t have to turn his head to know where they’re going, focusing his gaze on Eren in front of him. Levi finds that he doesn't much care for their large gap in height nor the fact that neither of them are wearing the standard dress in this couple's dance.

Eren, true to his word, is always one beat behind and looks more than flustered staring down at their feet and struggling just trying to keep up. It’s only been a minute, but already his movements are stunted and terrible, and Levi wants to roll his eyes.

“Eren,” he says when his foot just narrowly avoids being stepped on one too many times.

“Hm?” Eren says distractedly, concentrating hard on moving his legs properly. He’s biting his lip and gripping Levi’s hand with such deadly force, as if he’s about to fall down after every step.

“Eren, look at me,” is all Levi says. And it takes a bit of prodding but Eren finally does, bringing his head up to stare into Levi’s face and look as helpless as ever. Levi can see his brows creasing together with worry, his eyes looking like they’re almost watering. “Just look at me, okay? Just breathe and look at me.”

Eren nods and takes a shaky breath, gazing hard into Levi’s eyes. With his attention now on Levi, his grip eventually begins to loosen and the features on his face visibly soften one by one. He stills follows after Levi, but he’s less unsure, less jittery. His pacing eventually evens out the further and further along the dance floor they get, avoiding other couples and not sparing them a single glance.

Eren never gets on par with actual dancing, but he gets good enough for Levi to radiate a slight smile and tell him, “Not bad, right?”

Eren’s face reddens, and he coughs a bit before replying, “Y-Yeah.” And Levi hopes Eren is having a good time, because he sure is for the first time that night. But Eren has to break the nice moment by saying again, “I still think you should be with someone more your age.”

Levi has to roll his eyes at that. He’s really growing tired of all the frivolity that keeps spewing from Eren’s mouth. “You’re more interesting than people my age.”

“Someone more appropriate…”

“You _are_ appropriate.” It’s Levi’s turn to squeeze Eren’s hand because he doesn’t know how many more times he has to reiterate himself. “Because I said so,” he ends up saying, and Eren finally clamps up.

He still doesn’t look thoroughly convinced but Levi’s never seen him blush harder, and he can’t hide it with Levi pressed up so closely against him. Looking completely embarrassed, and for an entirely different reason than his shameful dancing, Eren gives his shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

“Okay…” he concedes, looking at Levi with a bashful smile. And Levi finally feels like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders.

The night is young until they're left spinning and spinning, and their legs just barely give out when all the other couples leave the floor. They laugh and talk about never dancing again. One of them mentions better ways to spend their time like adventure stories and what it’d be like to sneak out late at night to count the stars and go beyond the gates and gardens and beyond their property. They talk about seeing the edge of the ocean one day so they can just sit there and watch the waves crash against each other for miles and miles on end. They talk about seeing snow and snowfall and seeing the mountains and trees as tall as the sky. And before Levi can tell Eren that he’d really really like that, the music ends too soon and they have to let go of each other for the remainder of the night.

 

The days and nights pass by with Levi lugging through work or sleeping through boring homeschooled lessons. He finds he most looks forward to the times when tea is brought to him, and Levi would take this moment to ask Eren to sit in on his lessons with him. Of course, Eren would always refuse at first, saying he'd be a distraction. Levi would tell him just this one time, just this one time, but he ends up saying this every time, and Eren ends up giving in.

And then he would sit there, attempting to be silent, attempting to not be a distraction, but he'd be unable to contain himself, often pointing out the teacher’s ridiculous hairstyle, which would usually prompt Levi to comment that it’s a two-toned wig and nothing else would change his mind. They laugh until the teacher is scolding the two of them, attempting to send Eren out, and this would cue Levi threatening to have the teacher fired or beheaded for his insolence. It usually seems effective, causing them to turn back to the textbook in hand muttering slews of annoyed and angry comments to himself.

"Bring more of that tea," Levi would tell Eren later on after the teacher had already rushed to leave and they're left alone together. Levi would finish his cup all the way down to the last few droplets.

"Tomorrow," Eren would assure him, gathering up their cups, and Levi tries to look apathetic but finds himself feeling irredeemably happy.

So he waits for Eren everyday.

And it's going well until one day Eren stops coming altogether, tea long gone or forgotten, and Levi has to endure through lessons and writing papers under an unquenchable thirst. He confronts Eren sometime when they're both in the same hallway, and he ends up being told dejectedly that Eren has other chores to do and can’t be bothering a prince in study right now. At one point, he accidentally side glances his mother who happens to be standing by as if keeping close watch, so Levi knows she has something to do with this.

He's almost in a fit of rage as he yells at his mother later, demanding to know why Eren has suddenly and drastically reduced the time spent with him, and she only tells him his studies are slacking, he’s not being serious, and Eren is not being paid to play with him. Levi is willing to argue until dawn with her, saying Eren only brings him tea, it's the tea that makes him happy, and Eren is not the reason why he hates his studies. His mother is outraged regardless and isn’t willing to listen, merely sending him to his room to think about his behaviour and why exactly he's been acting so inappropriate.

Levi does think about it, and he becomes more confused than ever. It must be that incompetent teacher is what he concludes, thinking that he and Eren got ratted out. But it doesn't change the fact that as he sits alone at the mahogany desk with only the company of himself and piles of bland literature, he starts to feel the overwhelming sensation of loneliness and the constant prying desire to attain something he knows is not as insignificant as daily cups of tea.

So lately more often than not, Levi finds himself locked in his room, contemplating whether to jump under the covers of his bed or jump out the window. It’s not like the window is very high nor the room very small but he still feels stifled, feels as if the room can never be big enough nor the window clean enough for sunlight to properly get through. It never feels enough, never feels as if Levi will ever be properly satiated. But from what, he still doesn’t know.

And sometimes Levi doesn’t come out for days on end, forcing Eren to leave food outside his room, telling him muffled words through the door to eat at least something if not all of it. Levi just turns his back to the door, and he can hear his mother scream at Eren trying to understand why her son isn’t acting right, where he went wrong, where she went wrong to have him go wrong. When Eren grows tired of being passive and listening to her criticisms and infuriating prattle, he starts to shout back telling her Levi must be going through a phase even though he’s not going through a phase and Levi knows that Eren is fully aware of this.

He spends a lot of his time staring out his window at the gates that surround their property, or writing in the dark if it’s night time because he feels less distracted and the sight of his bedroom furnishings sometimes get to him. He burns through the wax of numerous candles, writing arbitrary things. Writing everything from fiction to nonfiction to summaries of all the books he’s ever read. He writes about multivariable calculus to swords slaying giants to what kind of objects and tactics he’d need if he really were to jump out of the window and survive. He writes about princesses falling in love with dragons and ends up liking this idea more than anything else, so he comes up with story upon story about princesses leaving their towers, princesses flying with their dragons, princesses that travel the world and don’t ever look back.

And when he’s not lying awake at night with this idea swimming in his head, he’s dreaming about it in his sleep, unable to forget it even when he ends up writing one of his stories whose happily ever after is the dragon breathing fire and accidentally burning the princess to a crisp.

He does come out of his room every once in a while, having gotten sick of staring at the same four corners of his room or the ceiling of his four poster bed, and mostly at night time when he thinks that everyone is asleep. He’s welcomed by his mother with a scornful face and accusations of various things from illness to mental illness. And Levi just ignores her, heading straight to the kitchen for an apple or something else fresh unlike the stale food he leaves out every night until the last minute to eat.

Eren never says anything, hanging in the background behind his mother, waiting until Levi looks at him for longer than ten seconds before saying he’s glad to see him with a genuine smile on his face. And Levi only regards him for a moment before giving a nod, not saying anything else save for telling Eren his clothes need changing and his bed sheets need washing.

Eren would always comply, walking into the room following after Levi, and only commenting on the surprisingly impeccable state of array the room is in besides Levi’s hair and the mysterious smell. He’s about to go wring out the curtains before he ends up pausing at the front of the bed with Levi already sitting on it, suddenly holding his arms outstretched towards Eren. The silk nightshirt he’s wearing, probably has been wearing for days and days, is large and too big for him, and only further emphasizes his small frame.

“Me first,” Levi says before Eren has time to reach for the bed covers instead. And the way he shakes his arms impatiently has the hem of his collar falling around his shoulder, revealing bare skin. And Levi might have purposely lifted his chin up a bit, cocking his head to the side, and exposing more neck than is entirely necessary. It makes Eren swallow thickly around the lump in his throat and clamp his hands together in a tight fist at his sides.

But then he’s reaching forward to place his hands on the underside of Levi’s palms, sliding fingers down forearms and feeling less of the material and more of Levi. Levi feels himself shiver, skin tingling under the touch, feeling the caress of every which way. Eren gets past his elbows and upper arms and then to Levi’s shoulder, pausing before gently rubbing a thumb on the skin and Levi finds the touch strangely soothing. He sits completely still, closing his eyes, and only feeling every hovering movement of Eren’s fingers on him.

Levi knows his heart is beating quickly, his breath coming in shortly, but he ends up feeling the collar of his shirt being pulled back over his shoulder, having the creases smoothed down softly, forlornly, before Eren’s hands are off him completely. Eren avoids his face after Levi's eyes snap open in some sort of state of confusion and lets out a breath of air that pulls him back to his senses.

Levi’s arms fall to his sides as Eren quickly moves away to heave the sheets and blankets off the bed. He doesn’t get up until Eren is asking him to, politely and still a bit unnerved, and Levi gets up with a scoff. Eren gathers the sheets in his hands before shuffling away and calling over his shoulder that he’ll be back with fresh ones in a bit. He rushes out and the door closes, leaving Levi to sit back down on the bare bed, arms dead and shoulders crestfallen.

“Idiot,” is all he says under his breath before falling sideways face first into the mattress.

 

It’s another year before Levi is being forced once more to put on dress robes and that godforsaken frilly cravat that a maid is now shoving down his neck. It’s midmorning and he hasn’t been informed of any parties or meetings or galas that need to be attending, so he hasn’t the faintest clue why he’s being handed flower corsages or spritzed with aromatic perfumes in questionable places. It all sickens him, and he's wondering why he can't have a male dress him instead of this uptight maid.

He resists for only the absolute minimum necessary, which includes some verbal complaining and occasional swearing, before he finally gets fed up and demands to know what’s supposedly going on later. After a bit of sidestepping and feigned ignorance, he hears the real reason why he has to dress up like this. It makes his eyes widen and he immediately drops everything, almost running out of the room half naked.

“Get away from me, _hag_ ,” he spits out, tugging his arm roughly from the maid who has a tight grip on his wrist before he's able to get one foot out the door.

“What did you say to me?” she gasps as her nails dig ever farther into his skin.

“I said get—”

There’s a quick slap to his face and a harsh echoing sound that reverberates through the walls and the high ceilings of the powder room.

Levi is running out the door, out of the house, and down the stone steps towards the gardens. He doesn’t stop, passing white hyacinths and red roses, and sprinting over the bridge that cuts across the river stream of their property.

He reaches the royal empress tree hidden between the tall bush hedges that tower high above his head and shield him from the sunlight. Taking a deep breath and rubbing his cheek sorely, he breathes in the sweet scent that wafts around him because it always calms him down when he's trying to will readily forming tears away.

He squats down, one hand on the tree, and closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to think, doesn’t want to have anything to do with the future and expectations and things he doesn’t like. He can normally tolerate them rather well, or somewhat well, but today in particular, this issue in particular, was angering to say the least.

He’s not alone for long when a sudden voice is heard from behind him, and his peace and quiet is disturbed once more. “Well, what do we have here?”

It gets Levi to his feet and he turns around despite not being surprised at all to see who it is. “Why did you follow me, Eren?” he says like it's an over-rehearsed line in a script.

Eren stands formally, still decked out in his typical butler garb, white gloves and a black swallowtail suit, not fit for standing on the grounds and too close to meticulously cut shrubbery. Eren looks almost solemn as he replies, “It’s my duty.”

Levi looks away, trying not to sniff through his running nose or show Eren his watery eyes. But he can already feel his eyelids getting heavy with more tears just by looking at Eren. Levi doesn’t want to see him right now, not in this state, and not when he feels so uneasy.

“It’s not your duty to invade my privacy,” Levi bites out, and he tries to sound more confident than he really feels.

“It’s my duty to make sure you’re okay, Prince Levi.”

He flinches at that, rubbing again at his swollen cheek. “I’m fine. Go away. You’re only bothering me.”

He sits down the ground, not caring that he’s dirtying his pristine and carefully chosen clothes to meet the woman of his future. He faces the tree, back towards Eren, because he can’t look him in the eye right now. He wants to enjoy the company of himself and only himself at least for a little while longer.

“Prince Levi, I know you’re upset...” And then Levi hears a sigh, a sigh that he knows all too well because it precedes the one line that he detests more than anything else in the world. “...But it is your duty to fulfill the requirements of being a prince.”

It’s graining on his ears and it’s redundant, what Eren’s saying, because Levi has heard it too many times. Heard it from everyone he knows, heard it in his sleep, hears it right before he has to do absolutely anything. And hearing it from Eren only makes his chest burn with anger more than ever. “I didn’t choose to become prince. I won’t marry her. She’s probably stupid and ugly,” Levi says, knowing it's just an excuse.

There’s a pause as he insists on staring at the bark of the tree in front of him, and he can practically feel Eren’s patience growing thin. “That may be so… but we all have to do things in life we don’t like to do.”

Levi huffs out, “Yeah? Well, so what. I’m growing tired of this.”

His head is down, not wanting to look up at all as Eren finally grounds out, his usual composure snapping, “You are a prince! When will you stop acting like a child?”

Levi’s teeth grind together. “Maybe when I’m able to start making my own decisions for once! Like an adult!”

He lashes out towards the tree in front of him. But he’s not upset at Eren. He’s upset at himself and upset at society. The burden is growing too much for him, and he tells himself that this is the one choice he has to make on his own. The one choice that he will refuse to the ends of the Earth to have anyone make for him, not even Eren.

“When was the last time you had to do something you didn’t want to do?” Levi asks, and he tries to make it sound like one of his musings but he really wants to hear an answer this time.

“…All the time,” is the answer. And the voice is close, Levi thinks that he can feel almost feel it on his neck.

When he turns around to look behind him once more, he’s face-to-face with Eren who's crouching down, so close, inches away, and Levi can’t move.

Those eyes of Eren’s are serious, sharp, and piercing through him that make him shudder. It’s the first time he’s felt Eren staring at him this long, this hard. Not even at the dance, not even that one time on the bed, and he can’t look away. It’s mesmerizing, chilling him to the bone, and he can’t think of a single thing to say.

And then almost too quickly those eyes turn sad, softening to the point where Eren almost looks like he’s going to cry as well. It pains Levi, having to witness this turmoil of emotion from Eren because it's a first. He feels it in his gut and his head and in his chest.

“Not everyone is able to do the things they want to do,” Eren repeats, lowering his eyes to the ground like he's ashamed to have been saying this all these years.

“What is it you want to do?” Levi wants to know, wants to hear it come from Eren’s lips. He doesn't want to muse anymore.

“I want you to be happy,” Eren finally says in almost a whisper.

And it’s not the response Levi was looking for but he feels his heart pound with distress. If just once, he wants Eren to be totally and completely selfish with his desires. It’s selfish for Levi to want even that, selfish for him to live his life the way he wants to simply just because. But he’s been on a losing streak his whole life and Levi can’t lose this.

“Marrying her won’t make me happy.”

It’s the truth and nothing but the truth, and it’s the one thing he wants Eren to know, if nothing else. But despite this, Levi is on the verge of breaking when he hears Eren's next words.

“But being with me is impossible.”

And Levi sees Eren's face twist into an uncanny smile, one that looks as fake as the words that come out of his mouth. It's sickeningly sweet, trying to be strong for the both of them because Eren knows that if he doesn't do this—doesn't say these words, doesn't smile this smile, doesn't put on this act that breaks them apart—Levi will never be able to let him go.

And yet, Levi can't take it.

He's grabbing on to Eren, shaking him, asking him what the hell he’s saying. If only they could keep deluding themselves, keep ignoring their fates that had been carved so plainly and definitively in front of them for as long as they've lived. He wants to hold onto Eren forever, wants to bury his face into his shoulder and have Eren pat his head telling him everything’s going to be okay. All he's ever needed was for Eren to be right there beside him, telling him that as long as he finishes writing that one last paper or attending that one last party, that everything will be alright. He knows he can't live in darkness but he wouldn't mind it if Eren were to block out the light for him, tell him to ignore the world while it’s just the two of them. And all the writing, all the stories, all the happy endings that he writes are never going to make up for this.

“Please,” is all that Levi says.

And he doesn't know what it means when Eren brings his chin up to rest his lips on the top of Levi's head and says, “I want to make you happy.” Because for some reason those same words sound far too different than when they were said before.

Almost as if Eren somehow put himself first in that sentence.

And as they sit on the ground together, hearing the wind bristle through the leaves of the giant tree and the slow engine of a car pass by on the driveway to the house, Levi is able to tolerate everything for just a split moment when Eren’s hand presses into his back and brings him in, holding him close and safe. And the pain in his chest slowly begins to dissipate, evaporating into nothing, even whilst knowing in the back of his head that what Eren just said could very well turn out to be a lie in the end.

 

 

It isn't until morning the next day when Levi's mother discovers the note left sitting on the dresser in his bedroom next to an unmade bed with messy sheets and a blanket tied in a makeshift rope thrown across the floor. The wind whistles in through the open windows, blowing stacks of ink-filled parchment off the desk and around the room, turning it into a flurry of flying papers. The note that lies beneath a paper weight is picked up and when his mother brings it up close to read, it tells the short story of a princess riding off into the sunset on the back of a heroic dragon, never to be seen again.

 


End file.
